Richard, I absolutely agree that concentrating on what we enjoy in poetry is the goal, and that cutting everything down is too easy. It's useful to point to what is excellent. to show why it is, we might sometimes have to point also to what's less excellent, or less enjoyable to us, and say why.
So here's my example of a really great issue of a magazine: The Cortland Review, issue 34, which contained the sonnet feature. It contained an enlightening piece of prose about the situation of the modern sonnet and a variety of sonnets, using many different current definitions. That's not to say I approved of all the definitions or liked all the poems, but I was enlightened by the range.
The poem from the issue that has most stuck in my mind is Joyce Sutphen's "From the 6th Floor,"--and I confess that's partly because she's local and I loved her book Naming the Stars--but it's also because I was struck by the basic idea, being conscious that the building one is in was once not there, and because of the novelties of rhyme, like using "once was" as a rhyme with "was never."
What other good issues are people willing to show us?
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